


the ruins of the day, painted with a scar

by decadencethief



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 11:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18570757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadencethief/pseuds/decadencethief
Summary: A young man tumbles into divinity.





	the ruins of the day, painted with a scar

He’s falling in reverse.

Gravity lurches from underneath him, wrenching him off his feet, and he’s plummeting into the dome. Fast. Ever faster. The kaleidoscope of stained glass swirls closer; reds and yellows and blues blend together in a dizzying whirlpool. He’s being tugged like a puppet with a single string hooked behind its navel. He wants to brace himself, fight it, resist—it stops. The sudden jerk rattles his teeth. His gasp dies before it can leave his mouth.

He’s suspended in mid-air beneath the top of the dome, a hundred feet above the floor. He’s paralysed. He can’t feel his limbs; streaks of coloured light flood his vision, so bright they leave burn marks behind his eyes. The smell of ozone washes over him and he holds his breath.

No lightning follows.

This final waiting moment stretches far longer than it should, impossibly long, unbearable. It coils around him and chokes him with the realisation that—this is it. Any illusion of choice he ever thought he had is scrubbed from him, leaving only cold, petrifying terror in its wake.

He was seven years old the first time the city guard beat him up. He had been just a bit too reckless, just a bit too desperate. There were two of them - big, burly men with cruelty etched on their faces. They’d caught him trying to steal from a noble’s carriage. He bolted, the two of them on his heels, alarmingly fast for their size. He’d done this before, he knew how to use his speed and small build to his advantage. He only needed a fence to climb up or a wall low enough to scale, and he’d be out of reach of the guards’ curses and balled fists.

He turned into a dead-end street.

He felt the same terror then, when he realised he was trapped. He was helpless, caught like a rat between the coarse wall and the hulking figures slowly approaching.

He tastes his fear now, the same way he did when the guards finally closed the gap. It drips down his throat and coats his tongue. He wants to retch, but his body is not his own anymore.

He forgets how to breathe.

The pressure starts building between his ribs, below his heart. It pushes the air out of his lungs. It keeps expanding until it’s pressing against his ribcage, suffocating. It turns into pain before long. It burns, _sears,_ a new sun comes to life inside the cavity of his chest with an explosion that immolates him from within. Unlike an explosion, it keeps burning, tongues of white-hot pain lapping across his body, slowly spreading. Every part of his body is reduced to ash, muscles and bones and sinews torn fiber from fiber until he doesn’t know his own body, until everything that makes him _him_ is carved out, incinerated, forged anew.

He doesn’t lose consciousness. He wishes he did, wishes he could escape the burning scaffolding of his body, but he’s caught in a moment that might as well be eternity.

It lasts for four minutes and thirteen seconds.

He knows that, the instant the burning stops. It’s gone like fire in an airless room, leaving no trace behind.

The temple is empty. He’s facing northeast; if he opened his eyes, he would see the second sun just grazing the horizon in its slow descend. Somewhere above his right foot, the first light of the Harbinger is blossoming against the encroaching darkness.

In the temple’s graveyard, all the way to the back, a stray dog is whimpering with hunger.

The string behind his navel loosens. He sinks towards the floor just as he regains control of his limbs, and he twists around. His knees hit the floor first, and then his palms. The marble is cold beneath him, its surface cracked with centuries of use.

I’ll kill you for this.

_I don’t want to be here. I want to die. I want to jump into the river and stop this. _

** Of course this is our best room, we value our patrons’ comfort beyond everything else. **

_ Three drops of this in his drink and he’ll never wake up again.                 _

God of deception, please don’t let her know I’m lying!

He grips his head, curling into himself as dozens, _hundreds_ of voices speak and whisper and scream inside his mind. He doesn’t know them. His consciousness reels as it tries to make sense of them.

His hair is in knots, drenched in sweat. If the council finds out the truth, they will expel you. It sticks to his fingers as he runs them down his scalp. **This will be the last time, I promise!** There’s fine dust hanging in the air. It tastes bitter on his tongue. I need you to make it look like an accident. His heart is beating slowly, steadily. He exhales through his teeth. There’s no impulse to breathe in.

**_God of death, please have mercy on my little girl._ **

Seer’s eyes snap open. He sees everything - the dust particles in the air, the imperfections in the reliefs on the wall, the slit of light around a hidden door to his left. Magic hangs in the air, rolling off him in heavy waves, rippling around his legs, but also clinging - to the altar, beneath the dome, within the walls themselves. This is an old place, and full of death. He feels something tug him towards the graveyard, lives ended without proper rites, souls entangled in the remnants of the physical. Trapped. Wanting his—

He cuts the thought short. They don’t want him. This was not meant for him, none of it was, he shouldn’t be here.

He stares at his hands, feels the magic crackle and pool around them. He can sense his power; he could tear this building apart block by block without breaking a sweat, he could find every single person in his head and grant their wish.

He could kill them all.

His hands ball into fists of their own volition. It’s a smooth, quick movement, one he doesn’t think about until after it’s ended.

He stares at the chunks of marble in his grasp, both of them bearing a perfect imprint of each one of his fingers.

This is wrong. He shouldn’t be able to do this.

This isn’t his body.

By the Gods, who did this to him?

He collapses to his side, drawing his legs to his chest. Tears blur his vision as the onslaught of voices inside his head drowns out the sound of his sobs.


End file.
